Welcome to Mumof5StaySane telling you about every day chaotic family life with five growing children. Lifestyle, parenting, home improvements, reviews, days out, coping with ADHD/ASD & more. I'm a SAHM with five children aged 4, 7, 11, 13 and 19 years old. PR friendly. Images are my own and mustn't be used without prior permission. Feel free to get in touch.

Thursday, 10 August 2017

Decluttering the house when you are married to a 'hoarder' and trying to make things a bit tidier!

My husband is a hoarder! I mean not to the extremes that you see on the hoarding programmes on TV but he struggles to let things go.

The lounge on a tidy day. I try and limit the amount of toys that arrive downstairs although it definitely doesn't look like this every day!

I try and have a good sort out of the house to declutter and to make the house tidier but if I do it whilst the hubs is around then everything that is seen gets questioned. Why do we need to throw that away? Well I might need that at some point. Oh my Dad's sisters mums husband bought me that so I must keep it.

The kitchen is still in need of completion but I try and keep it clutter free. The children help by eating all of the food so it doesn't clutter up the kitchen!

There is an excuse for everything and I mean EVERYTHING! So I try and declutter when he isn't here. He doesn't notice that anything has left the house and I never throw or give away anything that I know he needs or has used in the past year or so. Last year we decided to clear out the loft. You know the space where everything just gets chucked up there until there is no more space and then you actually wonder what is up there. So up we go and find 8 dining chairs, 8! We didn't need them, we have dining chairs in the dining room around the table. I don't even know how long those chairs had been in there but we had put them there. So they had to go but hubs still questioned whether we should keep them for something. Also in the loft there were the endless amounts of boxes that you keep when you purchase something. They are never needed but you keep them just in case. Off they went. Bags full of stuffed toys were next. Teddies and soft toys we had bought over the years and got bagged up a good few years ago because they were just around the house everywhere but unloved by the smalls. So they got put in the loft. I refused to let anyone open the black sacks otherwise people would start claiming teddies from years ago. If they had been in there for 3 years then they weren't needed so they went too. Once we had got rid of all of that it was already looking very clear up there. We did have some more stuff to go up there from various rooms in the house. Things that we knew we needed or wanted to keep for now but it would clear up rooms around the house too. Clutter is not my friend and I try and declutter wherever I can. Unloved toys and outgrown clothes I try and sell on if I can which brings in a few pennies too.

The dining room on a clutter free day. These days are rare though!

It always seems like an endless task and I am always fighting against the clutter and the hoarder and mini hoarders who don't want to let go of things they haven't used in years.

Decluttering also means the house can start looking neater and tidier but that's another battle I am not winning as yet. We will get there though, in the end, one day, maybe when the kids have moved out!

If I can get rid of the bike that hasn't been used for nearly 20 years and has followed us around 3 house moves it will be a miracle!

1 comment:

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